Kengo Kuma's quake-resistant 'guy ropes' offer aesthetic appeal

By Dan Rule

UpdatedApril 14, 2016 — 2.58pmfirst published at 2.47pm

Though completed in late 2015, a collaboration between highly influential Japanese architect and writer Kengo Kuma and high-tech construction materials and textiles company Komatsu Seiren has been garnering its share of interest among the architectural and design community in recent weeks.

The speculative project saw Kuma apply the company's composite carbon fibre strands products to a building housing its fabric laboratory in Japan, creating a stunning swathe of filaments that extend from the building's roof to anchor points on the ground.

The strands are in fact designed for seismic reinforcement and are the lightest of their kind in the world, effectively acting as a series of guy-ropes stabilising a building in the event of an earthquake.